Dear families,
This is the last week of our gingerbread unit, and our last week before vacation. This week we will be comparing different spinoffs of The Gingerbread Man, including The Gingerbread Baby, and The Gingerbread Girl. Here are the books we will be reading.
Monday Speech group, OT group
Tuesday Sequencing the story of the gingerbread man, counting buttons on
the gingerbread man
Wednesday Tracing the Gingerbread Man's tracks, making a snowman
Thursday Comparing gingerbread man stories, cooking a gingerbread man
Friday Speech group, Daily Living Skills group
Check out what our elf did this week!!
On Tuesday Eddie the Elf hung out on our door!
On Wednesday Eddie the Elf painted a picture of Santa in our easel!
Don't forget about our Holiday party this Wednesday at 10:45!
- The Barnyard Buddies
Dear families,
This week we are starting our Gingerbread Unit. On Tuesday, an Elf On the Shelf will be visiting the Barnyard Buddies...I wonder what kinds of silly things he will do when he's here! This week we are exploring different renditions of books that have the same story line and comparing and contrasting characters, plot, and endings. Here are the books we will be reading.
Monday Speech group, OT group, 1:1
Tuesday Using big and small lines and curves to make letters, lacing
gingerbread men
Wednesday Gingerbread crayon rubbings, matching letters on gingerbread men
Thursday Matching dot stickers to numbers, gingerbread man puzzle
Friday Speech group, daily living skills
-The Barnyard Buddies
Dear Families,
Given the shortened schedules these past few weeks, we have just finished our first week's worth of work from our Friends Unit. We drew pictures of what we like to share with our friends and put them together to make a friendship quilt, we practiced 1:1 correspondence by counting bears, making a pretend pizza, matched number to quantity, made our own fruits puzzle, sequenced the story of The Little Red Hen, and made AB patterns. Here's what we will be reading this week.
Monday Speech group, OT group, 1:1
Tuesday Counting apples and matching numbers, making fruit for our
class cornucopia
Wednesday Rhythm sticks, making turkeys
Please note that Wednesday is a half day. Full day students will be going home at 11:30 on Wednesday with all of the other students. They will still get picked up and dropped of by the school bus. If you have any questions, please let me know.
-The Barnyard Buddies
Dear families,
This is the last week of our Families Unit! We will be finishing up our unit activities and doing some fun Halloween activities. We planted pumpkin seeds a few weeks ago, and learned about how we take care of things to make them grow, so we'll check on Halloween to see if our pumpkins grew. This week we will be reading Big Pumpkin, The Little Old Lady who was not afraid of Anything, and Corduroy.
Monday OT group, Speech group
Tuesday Matching numbers to quantity, 5 little pumpkins activity
Wednesday Decorating pumpkins (if they grow) ; ) matching rhyming
pictures
Thursday Exploring changing leaves, creating clothes for corduroy
Friday Speech group, Daily Living Skills group
A few things:
- Please remember to send your child to school in appropriate clothing; including a winter coat every day, and hat, gloves, and boots when applicable. We go outside first thing in the morning so, even though it may get warmer later on in the day, it's still pretty cold when we are out there.
- Wednesday is Halloween, and the Burlington Early Childhood Center is having a pajama party, so please send your child to school in their pajamas to celebrate!
- Sign language is a big part of our classroom. Please check out our new sign language blog (click on the tab at the top of the page) to learn about how, when, and why we use sign language in the classroom.
-The Barnyard Buddies
Dear families,
This is the fourth week of our Family Unit. This week we are talking about where families live, and how some families are big, while others are small. In our books, some of the families live in apartments, while others live in houses, so we are comparing sizes of our families and talking about where we live. This week we will be reading Whistle for Willie, Corduroy, and Noisy Nora.
Monday- OT group, speech group
Tuesday- Sequence a pumpkin growing story, making a pumpkin patch
Wednesday- Matching colors, alphabet bingo
Thursday- 5 Little pumpkins picture, making clothes for corduroy
Friday- Speech group, Daily Living Skills
Next Wednesday, on 10/31 (Halloween) we will have a pajama party at school!! Please send your child to school in their pajamas and appropriate footwear for the school day.
-The Barnyard Buddies
Dear families,
We're on the third week of our Family Unit. This week we are learning about how our families make us feel and how to get our family's attention by using our words, instead of using inappropriate behaviors (throwing toys, screaming, hitting, running away, etc.) This week we will be reading Noisy Nora, Peter's Chair, and Mouse Paint.
Monday OT inclusion, Speech group, 1:1
Tuesday Planting a pumpkin seed, Mixing primary colors to
make secondary colors
Wednesday Planting a pumpkin seed, Matching sounds in film canisters
Thursday Matching colors, Sorting items that babies and "big kids"
need
Friday Speech, Daily Living skills
Don't forget to check out our "Pictures" tab to see your child and the rest of our class hard at work!
-The Barnyard Buddies
Dear families,
This is our second week learning about families. This week we will be talking about the roles of different family members and how families change when a new baby comes. Here are the books we will be reading this week.
We often reread books during our units, each time focusing on a different piece of literacy. On our first read, we read the story verbatim, so that the students can hear the fluency and tone of text, use picture cues and foreshadowing in the text to make predictions about what will happen next, as well understanding the story line and develop concepts of beginning, middle, and end. The second read is for students to participate in, looking at the pictures to retell the story in their own words, as well as reiterating important parts of the story line and relate our concepts of the week to the stories. The third read is to talk about the feelings of the characters, how those feelings develop and change over the course of the story, and how situations change how a character feels.
Monday- OT group, speech group
Tuesday- Matching animal babies to their parents, sequencing
Peter's Chair
Wednesday- Coloring houses and adding family members
Thursday- Planting a pumpkin seed, making birthday cakes to reflect
our age
Friday- Speech group, daily living skills
-The Barnyard Buddies
Dear Families,
This week we are starting our Family unit. This week we will be reading Oonga Boonga, Peter's Chair, and Mouse Paint. We will be talking about what is a family, how all families look different, and we will graph and compare our own families.
Monday- OT group, 1:1, speech group
Tuesday- Family Bingo, matching letters of our names
Wednesday- Graphing our family members, rhythm sticks
Thursday- *Handwriting Without Tears* program, matching numbers 1-5
Friday- Speech, Daily Living Skills
-The Barnyard Buddies
Dear Families,
This is our third week of school, and our second week learning about farms. This week we are talking about what a garden is, comparing the similarities and differences between gardens and farms, and learning about how products get from the farm/garden to the store, and then from the store to our houses. Here are our books for the week.
Monday- OT group, 1:1, Speech group
Tuesday- Decorating apples, sequencing a chick hatching story
Wednesday- Counting farm animals, sorting apples by color
Thursday- Sorting big and small apples, making apple trees
Friday- Speech group, Daily living skills
-The Barnyard Buddies
Dear Families,
We are in our second week of school, and for the next two weeks we will be learning about farms. The concepts this week are; What is a farm, What are farms for, and why some animals live on a farm. We will be reading Eddie's Garden and Farmer Duck.
Work for the week:
Monday 1:1 work, OT group & identifying "different" in an array of
three & speech group
Tuesday All about me graph (large group activity) & cutting paper to
decorate pigs
Wednesday Color and shape ID activity & using tripod grasp to color and
crinkle paper to decorate apples
Thursday Sorting animals that do and do not live on a farm & sorting red,
green, and yellow apples
Friday Speech group & Daily Living skills (using utensils)
-The Barnyard Buddies
Dear Parents,
We had a great first week of school! This week was spent getting to know our friends and learning about what the routines and expectations are at school. We read The Kissing Hand and Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. We did some informal assessments at work time to see where are skills are at cutting, matching and labeling colors and shapes, sorting groups by attribute, writing grasp, dominant hand, name recognition, and matching letters. We record current performances in all of these areas, so that when we plan future lessons, we are able to differentiate instruction more appropriately to address the individual needs of all of the students.
Here is our class schedule:
8:25-8:40 Arrival time
8:40-9:00 Playground
9:00-9:10 Bathroom
9:10-9:30 Work time
9:30-10:00 Choice time
10:00-10:15 Circle time
10:15-10:35 Snack time
10:35-10:45 Story time
10:45-11:05 Small groups
11:05-11:25 Music
11:25-11:30 Dismissal
We have two work times during the day, one "work time" and one "small group". Small groups are lessons derived from our OWL curriculum (Opening the World of Learning). Work time can be, but is not always related to the curriculum. We use work time to provide consistent exposure to fundamental skills such as cutting, gluing, sorting, matching, number ID and rote counting, one to one correspondence, name identification and writing, and letter work.
If you have any questions about our schedule or any other school matter, please do not hesitate to contact me at conroy@bpsk12.org.
-The Barnyard Buddies
Dear Families,
We are on our last week of our Winter unit. Here's what we did this week.
Mitten Trees and Penguins
Hibernating Bears 
This week we will be learning about symmetry and how to measure things (temperature and size).
Small Groups
Monday- Making hot cocoa (OT)
Egg carton penguin
Tuesday- Mitten Painting
Window snow scene
Wednesday- Measuring Temperatures
Tracing tracks in the snow
Thursday- Coffee filter snowflakes
Measuring snowmen with unifix cubes
Friday- Oral Motor Group
Lacing snowflakes
-The Barnyard Buddies
